The Methuselah Gene (34 page)

“Alan,” Kevin said, almost as a greeting.
 
He rose as I aimed my gun at him, and the others became motionless.
 
Julie clutched my upper arm nervously.

“Toss it,” I told Connolly.
 
“Slow.”

“Toss what?”

“Your gun.
 
I know you got one, Kevin, or that door wouldn't have been open.”

He obeyed, almost casually opening his suit coat and withdrawing an automatic from its shoulder holster.
 
“Self-protection, buddy.
 
I see you got some.”

“Toss it in there, by the barrel,” I commanded, indicating the piano.

He did it.
 
The piano played its own song, as the pianist fled.
 
A modern atonal piece of brief duration.

“Where's
Winsdon
?” I asked.
 
“Where's your boss?”

“What?”
 
Connolly gave a short laugh.
 
“What makes you think I have a boss anymore, Alan?”

“You're full of it, Kevin,” I noted.
 
“You couldn't head this up alone—not even if you knew which goons to hire.”

He shrugged.
 
Maybe he'd heard the criticism before.
 
I waved my gun above the people in line, signaling for them to leave.
 
They were reluctant, so I jarred them from their lethargy.
 
I fired once, high, and then saw that my shot had blasted right through Christ's forehead on the image depicted in the stained glass window where the bullet had exited.
 
The brown and blue and red shards splintered, leaving Christ headless and more like the Holy Ghost, now—a silhouette framed by lead solder.

Sorry
, I prayed.

“Get out!” I shouted.
 
“Go home.
 
And don't drink any stored water!”

The people in the room began to move quickly toward the rear.
 
But Connolly, during my momentary inattention, snatched the wrist of the little boy nearest him, and jerked him back to hold him up as a human shield.

“Kevin,” I warned.

“
Noooooo
!” the boy's mother screamed, and attempted to intervene, but Kevin backed away from her, moving up onto the podium, toward the baptismal, where he then climbed over and into the water as
Felsen
backed away.
 

“Stay back!” he demanded, both to me and to
Felsen
.
 
Felsen
obeyed, moving out of the tank and up into the rear entrance room, behind and to the side.
 
But I did not stop.
 
Not until Connolly lowered both himself and the frightened kid neck deep into the still tainted water.

“Let him go . . . now,” I told Connolly, aiming my revolver.

“Sure thing,” Kevin replied, and lowered the boy—crying—into the water.
 
He then held the kid under, wrapped tightly against his chest.
 
The boy held his breath.
 
I could see him through the smoky green glass partition, struggling as the others in the church fled, leaving only his mother and Julie.
 
The fortyish woman with short black hair cried out in a horrific bray of anguish.
 
“Soon as you toss the gun up here,” Kevin said, “I'll get up.
 
Do it quick.
 
Boy's turning blue.”

The boy's mother stared between us in terror.
 
Pastor
Felsen's
wild eyes focused on Kevin with a strange new light, from around the corner where he waited on the steps behind the baptismal tank.
 
Clicking on the safety, I tossed the gun high and hard against the wall behind Kevin, and it dropped into the swirling water.
 
The kid's mother rushed to pull her son out as Connolly held his breath and dove for the weapon.
 
I was only halfway to Kevin's own pistol in the piano, though, and Julie was only halfway down the aisle to the exit, when Kevin came up with the gun.
 
He tried to fire, aiming at Julie's back, then clicked off the safety and fired a warning shot that ricocheted above our heads.

“Hold it, people.”

We stopped, and then looked at Kevin.
 
He now aimed the revolver at me, but stared at the others.

“Where do you think you're going?
 
Can't we buy you a drink?”

“We?” I asked.
 
And then I saw
Felsen
reemerge behind Kevin, except that the wild look in his eyes had now gone over-the-edge paranoid and delusional.

“Yeah, you were right.
 
I couldn't do this alone.
 
It was my idea, though.
 
Some of it, anyway.
 
Jeffers made it happen, of course.”

“Jeffers,” I repeated in amazement.

“Number two man, that's right.
 
Waiting for the old man to die.
 
He got tired of waiting, though.”

“Where is he?”

“You just missed him.
 
He's wrapping things up with the men we hired.
 
No job too unethical.
 
A talented crew.
 
Not as unlucky as you, though, Alan.”

“Except they're dead,” I announced evenly.
 
“Some of the bastards, anyway.”

Connolly froze for an instant, then blinked.
 
“Really?
 
I'm impressed.
 
Kinda suspected it, after you came in here like this.
 
Guess that means you can join the team, after all.
 
Call it plan B, then.
 
We cash in, set you up for the fall on this after your death.
 
Then we take a long, long vacation.
 
Now how's that sound?”

“We?” I repeated for
Felsen's
sake, although I didn't look at him.
 
“How will you explain your absence?”

“Hey, I'm still on the job,
dumbo
.
 
Business as usual for me.
 
I got
nothin
' to do with this.
 
I'm on vacation.
 
It's you who flew out here on your own, on a suicide mission.”

“Like Jim Baxter?”

“That was his choice.
 
This is yours.
 
Why make the same mistake?”

“Why not just play by the rules, Kevin?
 
Rules were what you always rammed down my throat.”

“Rules.”
 
He spat the word.
 
“The FDA had us by the balls.
 
We wouldn't have lasted through the years and the millions it takes to play by the rules.”

“So what's in it for Jeffers now?
 
Does he see no difference between a test results
coverup
and genocide?”

“Accident.
 
And if means early retirement, so be it.
 
It's what we all want, right?
 
Who wants to work for a gold watch and a pat on the back?
 
It just isn't done, pal.
 
Not in America.
 
Not anymore.”

“But even with Valium, how could you sleep at night,” I wanted to know, stalling as
Felsen
slowly descended into the water behind him, “realizing how many good churchgoing Christians you've killed?”

Kevin laughed.
 
“Got any idea how many people the FDA has killed?”

“What does
Tactar's
drug approval chances have to do with—”

“Hey, just take their old food pyramid!
 
Their warnings against saturated fats.
 
They knew the real cause of heart disease is trans-fats and sugar, but they're only admitting it now because they've been forced to.
 
My God, prior to 1930 heart disease was almost unknown in the U.S..
 
Up to then Americans were eating meat and butter all the time!
 
It's only after margarine and all that refined white crap flooded the supermarkets that the heart attack rate skyrocketed.”

“So you think that compares to what you've done here?”

Kevin shrugged.
 
“This is nothing.
 
Small potatoes.
 
It's just quicker, more visible.
 
Heart disease, now there's the ticket.
 
Keeps hospitals busy, and doctors employed.
 
All thanks to the fast food industry.
 
But enough of this.
 
It's time to find the boss, unless you've killed him too.
 
The islands await, my friend, and I'm sorry, but it's time for a swim.”

Chuckling, he cocked the pistol again.
 
Only
Felsen
intervened.

“Time for a swim,” I agreed, watching as the pastor attacked Kevin from behind in a hallucinatory rage, pulling him back into the tank.
 
Then
Felsen
boomed something about Satan as he took hold of Kevin's neck with a strong carpenter's hands.
 
Jesus' hands.
 
Kevin struggled, of course.
 
Kicking and screaming like a sinner at the edge of the Pit.
 
But country life, thanks to its real home cooked food and fresh unpolluted air, gives a man the power he needs to perform a special baptism.
 
And so Kevin's face was soon as twisted as
Felsen's
.
 
And I could witness it all, too, thanks to the thick green glass.
 
Just like at the zoo.

“Don't hold your breath,” I told Kevin on our way out.

But I don't think he heard me.

The woman whose son I saved was Jean Thurman, the maid at Mabel's boarding house.
 
Her four year old was Ricky.
 
Both wore blue.
 
Earlier, they'd been taken to a special town meeting by Rebecca
Crim
, rounding up survivors in a van for Pastor
Felsen
, who was “indisposed.”
 
Rebecca told them the meeting was mandatory, and an emergency, but she didn't need to be told that.
 
For one thing, the phones were dead, and the roads out of town were blockaded.
 
For another, the bizarre horror movie being filmed with “extras” from all over had turned a little too realistic.
 
And even Mabel herself had changed from being unusually angelic into someone with a morbid and lethal fascination for sharp knives.
 
At the church, Connolly and Jeffers had claimed to be FBI agents.
 
They urged everyone to stay in one place, right there, until help arrived from FEMA.
 
In the meantime, until an explanation for what was happening could be found, maybe a prayer service was appropriate.
 
Jeffers then directed
Felsen
to perform a baptismal service too, since the tank had just been filled the previous day.
 
This would be followed by a special communion service when everyone would sample grape juice that symbolized Christ's blood, not their own.
 
When asked by one non-believer woman what he thought was happening to people in town, Jeffers proffered a strain of Mad Cow disease.
 
When the woman said she wasn't going to pray or be baptized or take communion, Jeffers said she was free to leave.
 
Everyone watched her leave, then.
 
They heard the door open and close behind her.
 
Moments later, they heard her screams.
 
That was when they began to pray in earnest, and to get in line.
 
Felsen
had performed the service as though he were sleepwalking through a nightmare on Angel Dust.

The El Dorado was gone now, as I suspected it would be.
 
Also gone were the camera and tripod from the roof of the Sheriff's office.
 
I wondered if perhaps Jeffers had cut his losses and pulled out just a little early, film in hand.
 
Or maybe he had planned to set up Kevin all along too, and assumed I was dead.
 
That would prove to be a dangerous assumption, I vowed.

As we walked quickly back to the boarding house to get Jean Thurman's car, I thought about what might happen next.
 
No doubt Jeffers had laid some kind of an incriminating trail behind, implicating me, Darryl, and possibly Kevin.
 
What would do it, though?
 
What could tie me in?
 
Certainly Jeffers knew that if I claimed the CIA had been involved, my story would sound even more bogus.
 
So maybe he'd set up a secret bank account for me, just waiting for a large deposit from whoever I'd sold the formula to.
 
If so, it would eventually be found by investigators.
 
Incriminating evidence might also be found in my apartment or office.